Globes Night Was the Warm-Up. But the Parties Were the Point
As Oscar voting begins, I was inside as Clooney and other contenders chased momentum — with one even getting stuck in an elevator
Late on Sunday night, I walked into the Maybourne hotel in Beverly Hills just in time to catch Jessie Buckley leaving it. Flanked by her husband and a gaggle of well-wishers, the blue of her dress still gorgeous after hours of standing and smiling, Buckley grinned as she cradled in her hand the thing every actor dreams of, whether they admit it or not: a gold statue.
The fact that the statue is a Golden Globe, an award with a complicated history and some undeniable flaws, is, of course, relevant. But the point is that Buckley looks great holding it, that she gave a gracious and funny televised speech as she accepted her award for best actress in a drama for Hamnet and that Oscar nomination voting begins today — which means the real prize awaits.
I spent Sunday night’s Golden Globes watching them live with my colleague Christopher Rosen and many of you tuning in to share your own insights or correct me when, say, I couldn’t remember any best animated feature winners from this decade. You can rewatch the livestream on YouTube if you’re so inclined, or tune in to tomorrow’s Prestige Junkie podcast for the shorter version, in which Chris and I look back on the highlights of the evening and assess the state of the race as Oscar nomination voting finally opens.
The short version is that it was a good night for a lot of people, including Buckley and her film Hamnet, which won the best drama trophy at the end of the night and confirmed the hunch I’ve had all weekend that it’s playing very, very well with the L.A.-based industry. I’m not sure that’s enough for it to be a true best picture threat against One Battle After Another, which won four awards last night and still looks like a juggernaut, even if Leonardo DiCaprio seems likely to continue losing best actor trophies to his Gen Z movie star successor, Timothée Chalamet.
Even if the best picture race remains fairly stable, the acting races keep taking fun twists and turns, particularly in the supporting categories, where Sentimental Value’s Stellan Skarsgård and One Battle After Another’s Teyana Taylor won their first major awards of the season. Both seemed pretty locked in for Oscar nominations, despite Skarsgård’s strange SAG Awards snub, but each delivered speeches that ought to further cement their status. Taylor may now be the frontrunner in a wide-open supporting actress field, while Skarsgård is getting back to the frontrunner status he had heading into the fall festival season, when he joined us in our TIFF interview studio and looked back on the remarkable career that’s gotten him to this point.
Look, I’m not going to say that visiting The Ankler’s TIFF studio is a guarantee of awards season success, but it can’t hurt. The Secret Agent director Kleber Mendonça Filho and star Wagner Moura both had a chance to deliver speeches at the Golden Globes, respectively accepting the best international film and best drama actor awards. It was a remarkable haul for a complex, sometimes inscrutable Brazilian film about that country’s fraught political history. When Mendonça and Moura were in our TIFF studio back in September, they talked about a lot of the same things you heard in their speeches on Sunday night — about how The Secret Agent is a film about memory and trauma, and how the Brazil of the 1970s can teach us about our world today. The actor and director, as well as everyone working on the awards campaign at Neon, have done a remarkable job of building enthusiasm for this film, which is not at all easy to define.
With wins in two categories, The Secret Agent technically has the same number of Golden Globes as KPop Demon Hunters, which triumphed — as expected — in best original song and best animated feature. But as I witnessed firsthand at Netflix’s after party on Sunday, the KPop haul was actually much larger, with seven credited screenwriters on the winning song “Golden” plus three producers sharing the animated feature trophy. But as anyone who works in animation will tell you, and as directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans were eager to explain back in our TIFF studio, any animated feature is a remarkable group effort: 10 Golden Globes is probably not nearly enough.
Party Reports
There are many weeks ahead where I can write about the awards race from the comfort of my own desk. Don’t you want to hear about all the parties and schmoozing?
Starting with the Critics Choice Awards last Sunday, it’s been a veritable gauntlet, and as much as nobody wants to hear people complain about eating passed appetizers and accepting compliments, surely the awards contenders feel even more fried than I do. After all these years, I still haven’t really figured out what you’re supposed to learn from these parties — other than that awards voters get starstruck like everyone else, and that a party in a fun location will get more attention. But I did my best, and here are a few takeaways from a busy weekend in crowded rooms that have probably permanently damaged my hearing.
It’s not just your Instagram algorithm: everyone really is obsessed with Heated Rivalry
I had a hunch that, after their mid-December PR blitz and their show getting even more popular over the holiday break, Heated Rivalry stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams would continue making the rounds in the run-up to their Golden Globes presenting duties. Turns out I underestimated them: They were everywhere, often joined by their co-stars François Arnaud and Robbie G.K., and causing a stir at every single party they attended, as well as the Golden Globes on Sunday night, where they even powered through awkward scripting and a truly bizarre UFC stunt to present an award.
You can always tell when the biggest star has entered the room by how the energy of the party shifts toward them; with the possible exception of Leonardo DiCaprio’s arrival at the BAFTA tea, that center of gravity belonged to the Heated Rivalry team all weekend.
As I wrote back in December, we still don’t know if the Canadian-produced drama will even be eligible for this year’s Emmy race, though I did talk to one publicist over the weekend who seemed confident that HBO — which licenses the show for the U.S. but doesn’t produce it — could find a way to get it in. If that happens, expect the Heated Rivalry fervor to continue through an untold number of events between now and September. Though I think we’re all also rooting for these actors, plus creator Jacob Tierney, to find at least some time to get started on season 2.
For a last-minute push, you’ve gotta make a splash
Winning a Golden Globe and making a dynamite speech is one very, very good way to give your Oscar campaign a last-minute boost — but of course, it’s no guarantee. So studios were grabbing attention any way they could all weekend, both by having their brightest stars in person and by scheduling events at venues that were stars in and of themselves. A Beverly Hills jazz club founded by Herb Alpert hosted an event honoring the music of Avatar: Fire and Ash on Friday Night. A Saturday reception for Zootopia 2 happened at a luxe Hollywood Hills mansion. The Larchmont Village restaurant Max & Helen’s, opened by Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal, was a flex of a location choice for both a Spotify party and a Netflix toast to Adam Sandler, where Ted Sarandos and a wide range of boldface names were in attendance.
On Saturday evening, I took the long and winding roads up the Hollywood Hills to Castillo del Lago, a mansion so gorgeous it feels like a movie set, where Focus Features had hosted a screening and a small reception for Hamnet. Los Angeles lifers responded to my Instagram stories with envy that I’d managed to go inside, and the Academy members gathered around the buffet seemed as dazzled by the location as the arrival of the evening’s main attractions, stars Buckley, Joe Alwyn and Paul Mescal (who was apparently briefly trapped in the house’s vintage elevator).
As much as the Hamnet party was just another reception in a weekend crammed with them, the stunning location spoke to Focus Features’ commitment to promoting the film, as did the presence of Sir Ben Kingsley as the evening’s host. Every major awards contender is doing something similar if they’ve got the budget for it, and as always, it’s impossible to tell which of these big splashy stunts actually makes an impact. But with Hamnet’s two big wins on Sunday night, surely at least some of that time Mescal spent trapped in the elevator was worth it.
There’s too much charisma to go around this year
I went to the Hamnet reception immediately after watching Buckley, Mescal and director Chloé Zhao accept the top prize at the Movies for Grown-ups Awards with AARP, which won’t air on PBS in February but was a surprisingly starry stopover in this jam-packed weekend. With host Alan Cumming doing musical parodies for the five best film nominees (“Sinners takes it all!” “God I cried in Hamnet”) and stars like Laura Dern, Sandler and Kathy Bates seated up front, it felt like a good warm-up for the Globes. But the awards also tip off the winners in advance, allowing old friends and colleagues to take the stage to present them and providing a double-dose of star power in the process.
This paid off especially well when it came to Noah Wyle and George Clooney, who traded off duties presenting and receiving awards for best actor in a film (Clooney for Jay Kelly) and best actor in a TV series (Wyle for The Pitt). Those two are just really, really good at working a room, and though Wyle would go on to win a Golden Globe the following night, Clooney seems to be stuck in a permanent also-ran position for Jay Kelly (with Clooney’s co-star Sandler now on the bubble for a supporting actor nomination himself).
Every year, of course, there are more great performances than nominations to go around. But it’s not just Clooney and Sandler. Dern, who won best actress for Is This Thing On?, gave a great and moving speech at the Movies for Grownups Award, paying a brief tribute to her mother, Diane Ladd, who died in November. The winners of the supporting categories, One Battle After Another’s Regina Hall and Sinners’ Delroy Lindo, have won virtually nothing else all season, and weren’t even nominated by the Globes, despite being beloved veterans starring in major awards contenders. Even at the Globes, Julia Roberts — who gave one of her best performances in years in After the Hunt — was seemingly having a great time because she knew she wouldn’t win.
It’s corny to say that you wish everyone in an awards race could win, but in a year that’s so stacked with great movies and performances, it also happens to be true.
